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Where the Apple Ripens and Other Stories
In these stories, the author evokes the vulnerability and promise of childhood and adolescence and the uncertainty of childhood, and conjures up the charm and dourness of the Scottish countryside. Her subjects are those on the fringe of society - the old, the homeless, the orphaned and the lonely.
128 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 1987
About the author
Jessie Kesson
17 books10 followersJessie Kesson, born Jessie Grant McDonald, was a Scottish novelist, playwright and radio producer.
Her first published story was in The People's Friend in the 1930s. She moved to London in 1949 and, while working in a variety of other jobs, began writing radio plays for the BBC. Much of her work has been autobiographical, capturing the speech and landscape of the north-east of Scotland, and evoking the inter-war years. Her novels include The White Bird Passes (1958), which tells of her destitute early years; Glitter of Mica (1963), set in the farming communities of Aberdeenshire; and Another Time, Another Place (1983), describing the effect on those communities of the arrival of Italian prisoners of war in the 1940s. A collection of short stories, Where the Apple Ripens, was published in 1985, and her work has been adapted for television and the cinema.
(http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages...)
Her first published story was in The People's Friend in the 1930s. She moved to London in 1949 and, while working in a variety of other jobs, began writing radio plays for the BBC. Much of her work has been autobiographical, capturing the speech and landscape of the north-east of Scotland, and evoking the inter-war years. Her novels include The White Bird Passes (1958), which tells of her destitute early years; Glitter of Mica (1963), set in the farming communities of Aberdeenshire; and Another Time, Another Place (1983), describing the effect on those communities of the arrival of Italian prisoners of war in the 1940s. A collection of short stories, Where the Apple Ripens, was published in 1985, and her work has been adapted for television and the cinema.
(http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages...)
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 21, 2025
I ordered this book from my local library after reading another Jessie Kesson novel a couple of weeks ago. I thought it contained just the title story, but that turned out to be a novella of 77 pages, and the book contained a further ten short stories, described below.
Where the Apple Ripens opens with the protagonist, Isabel Emslie, about to start her last day at school. It’s also the funeral of a young woman called Helen Mavor, who has killed herself after giving birth to an illegitimate child. The setting is rural Scotland in the interwar period, and issues of sex and sexual morality are a big part of the story. Helen was the daughter of a local vet, and Isabel had hero-worshipped her at school, as a girl who was both older and middle-class.
Isabel’s parents are strict about what she can and can’t do, and where she can go. She feels constricted by this and wants to get out into the world. She also wants to find out about sex. When one her friends talks about how servant girls go “skirling with the horsemen up in the dark in the loft”, Isabel agrees with her friend that “They must all be disgusting, just,” but secretly dreams of being in that loft herself.
Circumstances create a scenario in which Isabel ends up having to deliver a pail of milk to Alex Ewan, who has a reputation as the village Casanova. It’s several miles to his farm and Isabel’s journey is a sort of mini-Odyssey, during which she encounters a variety of colourful local characters. I thought this story was really good, a rich re-creation of time and place.
Most of the short stories in the collection are drawn from the author’s own life. Her young childhood was spent in poverty in the town of Elgin and later in an orphanage in Aberdeenshire. She spent a year in an asylum suffering from depression, and on her release was given a work placement in the village of Abriachan, which lies high up above Loch Ness. After the war she lived in London where she was a careworker in homes for the elderly, supplementing her income by working as a nude model for art students. All of these settings can be found in the stories, which often feature people we would today call “marginalised.”
Stormy Weather – A teenage girl in an orphanage dreams of clandestine meetings with a boy from the local community. The story also explores the relationship between the girl and the Matron of the facility. Four stars.
"Once in Royal" – We seem to be back in “The Lane” that featured in Kesson’s first novel The White Bird Passes. In this one the local children anticipate Christmas. Five stars.
The Gowk – The title is a Scottish dialect word for a mentally disabled person. The setting is rural Aberdeenshire. A powerful though disturbing story. Five stars.
The Bridge – This story features a group of children, with the focus on the youngest, who is something of an outsider. Three stars.
Until Such Times – This seems to be a reworking of a section of The White Bird Passes. A young girl has been living with her mother (who pretends to be an aunt) in a homeless person’s hostel. The girl is placed with her grandparents “until such times” as the mother can find them a place. The grandparents’ house also has an invalid aunt, with a spiteful personality. You won’t forget the ending to this one. Four stars.
Good Friday – A woman in an asylum dreams of being released. Four stars.
Life Model – A very short story of four pages. A former life model, now in her 70s, decides to book one last appointment. A story to bring a smile to the face. Four stars.
Road of No Return – The protagonist revisits that village above Loch Ness, after a gap of forty years. Four stars.
Dear Edith – An elderly woman in a care home writes imaginary letters to “Edith”, her former life companion, now deceased. A depiction of what it means to live with “having to be grateful”. Five stars.
This Wasted Day – A portrait of an old woman from the gypsy/traveller community of north-east Scotland. Kesson’s own impoverished rural background meant that she knew the gypsy travellers, and she seems to have had a liking for them. Five stars.
As you can see, I’ve really taken to this author’s work!
Where the Apple Ripens opens with the protagonist, Isabel Emslie, about to start her last day at school. It’s also the funeral of a young woman called Helen Mavor, who has killed herself after giving birth to an illegitimate child. The setting is rural Scotland in the interwar period, and issues of sex and sexual morality are a big part of the story. Helen was the daughter of a local vet, and Isabel had hero-worshipped her at school, as a girl who was both older and middle-class.
Isabel’s parents are strict about what she can and can’t do, and where she can go. She feels constricted by this and wants to get out into the world. She also wants to find out about sex. When one her friends talks about how servant girls go “skirling with the horsemen up in the dark in the loft”, Isabel agrees with her friend that “They must all be disgusting, just,” but secretly dreams of being in that loft herself.
Circumstances create a scenario in which Isabel ends up having to deliver a pail of milk to Alex Ewan, who has a reputation as the village Casanova. It’s several miles to his farm and Isabel’s journey is a sort of mini-Odyssey, during which she encounters a variety of colourful local characters. I thought this story was really good, a rich re-creation of time and place.
Most of the short stories in the collection are drawn from the author’s own life. Her young childhood was spent in poverty in the town of Elgin and later in an orphanage in Aberdeenshire. She spent a year in an asylum suffering from depression, and on her release was given a work placement in the village of Abriachan, which lies high up above Loch Ness. After the war she lived in London where she was a careworker in homes for the elderly, supplementing her income by working as a nude model for art students. All of these settings can be found in the stories, which often feature people we would today call “marginalised.”
Stormy Weather – A teenage girl in an orphanage dreams of clandestine meetings with a boy from the local community. The story also explores the relationship between the girl and the Matron of the facility. Four stars.
"Once in Royal" – We seem to be back in “The Lane” that featured in Kesson’s first novel The White Bird Passes. In this one the local children anticipate Christmas. Five stars.
The Gowk – The title is a Scottish dialect word for a mentally disabled person. The setting is rural Aberdeenshire. A powerful though disturbing story. Five stars.
The Bridge – This story features a group of children, with the focus on the youngest, who is something of an outsider. Three stars.
Until Such Times – This seems to be a reworking of a section of The White Bird Passes. A young girl has been living with her mother (who pretends to be an aunt) in a homeless person’s hostel. The girl is placed with her grandparents “until such times” as the mother can find them a place. The grandparents’ house also has an invalid aunt, with a spiteful personality. You won’t forget the ending to this one. Four stars.
Good Friday – A woman in an asylum dreams of being released. Four stars.
Life Model – A very short story of four pages. A former life model, now in her 70s, decides to book one last appointment. A story to bring a smile to the face. Four stars.
Road of No Return – The protagonist revisits that village above Loch Ness, after a gap of forty years. Four stars.
Dear Edith – An elderly woman in a care home writes imaginary letters to “Edith”, her former life companion, now deceased. A depiction of what it means to live with “having to be grateful”. Five stars.
This Wasted Day – A portrait of an old woman from the gypsy/traveller community of north-east Scotland. Kesson’s own impoverished rural background meant that she knew the gypsy travellers, and she seems to have had a liking for them. Five stars.
As you can see, I’ve really taken to this author’s work!
January 8, 2021
Interesting collection of short stories by Scottish writer Jessie Kesson. The stories take place between the wars and deal with people from the fringes of society: the young, the old, the sick, the disabled. Kesson manages to weave a narration that both covers introspection but also allows comments on the close-knight communities and their everyday struggles.
The first short story is the best, I believe. It deals with the sexual awakening of a young girl who then has to experience that dreams are not reality. This careful take on rape (clad in other names in this one) is very forceful and impressive.
Overall I enjoy the usage of Scots in this one, one can really imagine the people and the places.
4 Stars
The first short story is the best, I believe. It deals with the sexual awakening of a young girl who then has to experience that dreams are not reality. This careful take on rape (clad in other names in this one) is very forceful and impressive.
Overall I enjoy the usage of Scots in this one, one can really imagine the people and the places.
4 Stars
December 1, 2016
First - I rarely comment on book covers (they seem to be so terrible, so often), but even if I hadn't wanted to read this book, the cover would have attracted me - a rare and wonderful thing. It is a detail from Black and Yellow by Dorothy Johnstone, a 20th century Scottish painter.
As often with collections of short stories, this one is uneven but I particularly liked The Gowk, Until Such Times, Dear Edith and Good Friday, as well as the title story.
As often with collections of short stories, this one is uneven but I particularly liked The Gowk, Until Such Times, Dear Edith and Good Friday, as well as the title story.
May 6, 2020
Kesson drew on her early life for inspiration in much of her fiction, which in the Introduction we are told was always composed in the form of a play for radio first. Several of the stories here reflect rural life, some are set in institutions, all are unmistakably Scottish. Most are adorned with page centred quotations from poems or hymns or songs. The characters within them are vibrant and individual; depicted economically, vividly and with compassion. This is good stuff.
The longest tale here is the first, Where the Apple Ripens, a novella describing two days in the life of Isabel Emslie, set to take up a place in service the next week in the big town. Her last schoolday is marred by its coincidence with the funeral of Helen Mavor, who had let herself waste away after the birth of her illegitimate baby. The novella is perfused with the contrast between Calvinist rectitude and human impulse, her mother’s admonishments, the prurient comments Isabel overhears as she passes the local bus stop, the thinly veiled innuendos and warnings, her poetic sensibility - illustrated by copious quotations from poems and hymns - her youthful exuberance and desire to dance (a heavy signal, this,) the bravado she expresses when she says she’s ‘not feared’ of Alex Ewan, the local man with a reputation, a bravado which is later revealed to have face value.
In Stormy Weather such inclemency is the only reason Matron can muster not to allow the older orphanage girls out to go to the Band of Hope meetings on Friday nights. The story, however, is more about the compromises, the quids pro quo, the petty revenges the inmates have with and over one another.
Set in 1923, ‘Once in Royal…’ relates the excitement around the scramble for tickets for the Chief Constable’s Christmas dinner for poor children as felt by Sarah, who does not consider herself the ‘poor, wee soul’ of others’ opinion.
The Gowk, Jockie Riddrie, is the local simpleton, forever hanging around the school fence, drooling, or exposing himself. After allowing herself to be enticed up into the woods young Liz Aitken becomes pregnant but steadfastly refuses to reveal to her family who the father is. For the village folk and especially the gowk’s stepmother, Kate, Jockie becomes the obvious candidate to blame. But his father Hugh knows better.
Having caught the biggest tiddler in a jam jar The Bridge is where the local boys span, hand over hand on its girders, across the river below.
Until Such Times is the interval during which narrator ‘you’ are staying with your Grandmother and the Invalid Aunt away from your Aunt Ailsa (who, we infer, is not your aunt) whom the Invalid Aunt says is man-mad and that ‘you’ would clip her wings. Invalid Aunt never has a good word to say about anyone but ‘you’ are devoted to ‘Aunt’ Ailsa, who is actually trying to do her best for ‘you’.
Another story narrated by an unnamed ‘you’, Good Friday is not the religious festival but the tale of a sufferer from acute neurasthenia longing for the day she’ll be released from mental hospital.
As its title suggests Life Model is about a sitter for Art Students, one who could hold a pose better than most, and of her secret for being able to do so.
In an intimation of mortality Road of no Return sees a woman come back to her childhood village overlooking Loch Ness and finds it deserted. But her memories remain.
Set in an old people’s home and with a kind of time-slipping narrative Dear Edith … describes the letters Mrs Cresswell composes to her dead friend Edith, interspersing these with the conversations of the staff.
This Wasted Day is the last of a tinker, arraigned at the Pearly Gates by those who looked down on her during her life with all their misconceptions and prejudices. The Big Man turns out to have different ideas from them but there is still a twist to come.
The longest tale here is the first, Where the Apple Ripens, a novella describing two days in the life of Isabel Emslie, set to take up a place in service the next week in the big town. Her last schoolday is marred by its coincidence with the funeral of Helen Mavor, who had let herself waste away after the birth of her illegitimate baby. The novella is perfused with the contrast between Calvinist rectitude and human impulse, her mother’s admonishments, the prurient comments Isabel overhears as she passes the local bus stop, the thinly veiled innuendos and warnings, her poetic sensibility - illustrated by copious quotations from poems and hymns - her youthful exuberance and desire to dance (a heavy signal, this,) the bravado she expresses when she says she’s ‘not feared’ of Alex Ewan, the local man with a reputation, a bravado which is later revealed to have face value.
In Stormy Weather such inclemency is the only reason Matron can muster not to allow the older orphanage girls out to go to the Band of Hope meetings on Friday nights. The story, however, is more about the compromises, the quids pro quo, the petty revenges the inmates have with and over one another.
Set in 1923, ‘Once in Royal…’ relates the excitement around the scramble for tickets for the Chief Constable’s Christmas dinner for poor children as felt by Sarah, who does not consider herself the ‘poor, wee soul’ of others’ opinion.
The Gowk, Jockie Riddrie, is the local simpleton, forever hanging around the school fence, drooling, or exposing himself. After allowing herself to be enticed up into the woods young Liz Aitken becomes pregnant but steadfastly refuses to reveal to her family who the father is. For the village folk and especially the gowk’s stepmother, Kate, Jockie becomes the obvious candidate to blame. But his father Hugh knows better.
Having caught the biggest tiddler in a jam jar The Bridge is where the local boys span, hand over hand on its girders, across the river below.
Until Such Times is the interval during which narrator ‘you’ are staying with your Grandmother and the Invalid Aunt away from your Aunt Ailsa (who, we infer, is not your aunt) whom the Invalid Aunt says is man-mad and that ‘you’ would clip her wings. Invalid Aunt never has a good word to say about anyone but ‘you’ are devoted to ‘Aunt’ Ailsa, who is actually trying to do her best for ‘you’.
Another story narrated by an unnamed ‘you’, Good Friday is not the religious festival but the tale of a sufferer from acute neurasthenia longing for the day she’ll be released from mental hospital.
As its title suggests Life Model is about a sitter for Art Students, one who could hold a pose better than most, and of her secret for being able to do so.
In an intimation of mortality Road of no Return sees a woman come back to her childhood village overlooking Loch Ness and finds it deserted. But her memories remain.
Set in an old people’s home and with a kind of time-slipping narrative Dear Edith … describes the letters Mrs Cresswell composes to her dead friend Edith, interspersing these with the conversations of the staff.
This Wasted Day is the last of a tinker, arraigned at the Pearly Gates by those who looked down on her during her life with all their misconceptions and prejudices. The Big Man turns out to have different ideas from them but there is still a twist to come.
November 11, 2024
Not normally a reader of short stories but these were generally really fantastic. "Until Such Times" and "Dear Edith..." were my favourites, although all of them are extremely good. Possibly the title story goes on a bit too long compared to the rest of them, and some of the particularly short ones (like "The Bridge") are relatively forgettable but don't take up much. The rest I would be pleased to re-read at some point, which is a luxury easier visited with short stories than with novels.
Fun fact I read almost all of the title story in a Wetherspoons at around 10-11PM, with a double shot of bourbon, thought it would be a really funny thing to do. Left before finishing because I realised there were only two other tables occupied. Thought this book was the most conceptually clashing book with that concept, but actually from reading it, it sort of really isn't(?).
Fun fact I read almost all of the title story in a Wetherspoons at around 10-11PM, with a double shot of bourbon, thought it would be a really funny thing to do. Left before finishing because I realised there were only two other tables occupied. Thought this book was the most conceptually clashing book with that concept, but actually from reading it, it sort of really isn't(?).
September 14, 2018
This collection of short stories set (mainly, I think) in the Scottish highlands was a nice read. Like most collections it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the stories I felt were either underdeveloped snippets of longer works or just left quite unresolved, which always makes me feel a bit like I've missed something. But when they grabbed me, I really did get hooked by them. The Gowk in particular has left an impression on me, and I'm definitely interested in reading one of her novels if I can get my hands on a copy. A very individual voice, and as a Scottish woman myself one I think is quite important.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews